7 ms·

This is bad news. People like Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and SpaceX, not to mention CEOs of Google, Microsoft and Adobe all

This is bad news. People like Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and SpaceX, not to mention CEOs of Google, Microsoft and Adobe all came to the US as students. Without the immigration of the brightest on the planet, the US will, over time, lose its edge.

maoistinquisitr 9y ago
Probably the opposite. American students with options are deliberately avoiding the fields the foreign students crowd because of the wage and working conditions suppression the added competition produces. Deliberately discouraging the huge numbers of foreign students will help better cultivate greater American talent. A talent pool of 320 million people is plenty. We don't need to scour the globe.
- curiousgal 9y ago
  I am yet to meet a single American who didn’t have access to college because of an international student. High tuition and fees are always the number one culprit.
  - ransom1538 9y ago
    "There are 3,003 international students enrolled in degree programs at MIT—430 undergraduates (10%) and 2,876 graduate students (43%)—for the current academic year." Really? First school I googled is 3k students. "High tuition and fees are always the number one culprit." No. US students attend IF they get in. This is why we are in a student loan crisis. There is no lack of money backed by US guaranteed college loans.
    - jdamon96 9y ago
      "No. US students attend IF they get in. This is why we are in a student loan crisis. There is no lack of money backed by USA guaranteed loans." Can you help me understand this logic? I don't understand the connection being made from admissions statistics to the student loans crisis.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - lsc 9y ago
        the idea being that if you are accepted, you can get a loan to go to school. A loan that you can't discharge in bankruptcy. A loan that can cause problems later on, if you can't get a job in a high paying field. Or, at least, I think that's what the post you are replying to was getting at. Another view is that the "student loan crisis" is a much bigger deal for people who take out loans for colleges that are easier to get into, colleges that have lower graduation rates and that don't have the same pipeline into higher paying jobs. Most of the elite schools have 90+% graduation rates, and if you graduate from one, you have a pretty decent crack at making good money (and thus paying off your loan without too much trouble.) The idea here being that the elite schools are what colleges promise to be (a path up the socioeconomic ladder) but they are extremely selective (I could totally pay, for example, but they wouldn't let me in; not without me taking two years off to go to community college first. My high school grades were terrible.) - many of the less prestegious schools don't have such high success rates. Community and state schools have graduation rates that are half what the elite schools have. San Jose State, a really pretty good 'state school' has a graduation rate around 50% (Of course, San Jose State is also pretty cheap) University of the pacific, a mid range (expensive) private school in Stockton has a 60% graduation rate. I personally feel that rating schools based on their graduation rates is super problematic; I mean, an elite school isn't going to 'take a chance' on a student who might not tough it out just because they take a reputational hit if the kid swings and misses. But it does make sense from a student loan perspective; if someone is accepted to Stanford, chances are they will graduate, and chances are, the student loans incurred won't be a huge burden, due to the opportunities available. - But a lot of this is simply that you aren't accepted to Stanford unless you are the sort of person who has a lot of opportunity. Maintaining these high graduation rates means that students who are less likely to succeed are not given a chance to try; Because a high graduation rate is part of what makes an elite school, and because high graduation rates generally mean an input filter that filters for people who would have succeeded anyhow, elite schools are not good ways for people who don't have opportunity to gain opportunity.
  - jjoonathan 9y ago
    I suspect he means graduate school. I'm white and have a native accent, but in my 2 short years of grad school I had four (!) instances of someone responding with shock at learning that I was a US citizen. One postsdoc even asked flat out what the hell I was doing in grad school if I wasn't working towards a green card.
    - Simulacra 9y ago
      My engineering advisor stressed that, despite the fact I'm a woman, it's critical the university does all that it can to keep me in the program because it was so bloated with international students.
    - NotSammyHagar 9y ago
      what field are you working in? my cs grad student experience was not like that.
  - chroem- 9y ago
    Come to Washington State. The University of Washington's preference to international students over in-state has become so lopsided that the state legislature has been threatening to cut off funding and force the school to change its name. Most of my in-state friends were denied admission into their majors during undergrad.
    - kalleboo 9y ago
      I don't know how things work in Washington, but the last article I read on California state schools (where you hear similar complaints) was that the international students were actually funding more in-state students with their higher tuitions, since the state itself wasn't funding the schools enough. So, lots of international students yes, but that also meant the school could afford to host more in-state students than if you got rid of the international students.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      The legislature would actually fund UW at an adequate level, it might be a valid threat. Also, if you want to get into UW, try being from Eastern Washington. There is a quota.
- pimmen 9y ago
  Do you have any source for your claim at all?
- aiiane 9y ago
  The computer science field would seem an empirical counter-example to your statement.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- nopinsight 9y ago
  You may wish to look at recent performance of different countries in academic competitions like International Math Olympiad and International Physics Olympiad for some objective metrics: https://imo-official.org/year_country_r.aspx?year=2017 https://imo-official.org/year_country_r.aspx?year=2017 http://www.ipho2017.id/home#official-results-of-ipho-2017 http://www.ipho2017.id/home#official-results-of-ipho-2017 The US ranks decently but behind China, Russia, and Vietnam, in both subjects.
  - nopinsight 9y ago
    Also take a note of the last names of these US representatives (comprehensive lists for both subjects): IMO 2017: Lin, Gu, Bhattacharya, Chroman, Peng, Huang IPhO 2017: Song, Raman, Balaji, Qin, Shi I would guess that, for many if not most of them, their ancestors just immigrated to the US 1-2 generations ago.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - nopinsight 9y ago
    Edit for the last sentence of my comment above (which is not factually accurate, although the point stands): The US usually ranks well but often comes behind China, Russia, or less well-known countries like Vietnam. Top talent are born all over the world. With global education becoming more decent esp in developing nations, these talented people can flourish and become competitive with those born in developed countries. 7+ billion surely include many more top talent than 300+ million.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
aaron-lebo 9y ago
Sergey Brin went to Stanford. Musk went to UPenn and Stanford. Picchai went to Wharton and the University of Chicago. Narayan went to UC Berkeley. Only Brin and Musk came as undergrads and only Nadella originated at a so-so school: Wisconsin-Milwaukee (he made his way to an MBA at Chicago, too). By and large the article is not talking about those people. Undergrads are where schools make their money (lots of graduate students are funded anyway). Almost none of these people would have been affected. It's hard to overestimate how useful and desirable the top schools are. When students from Akron are running any of those companies (a school the article talks about), then we can worry about losing out on top talent. I think the way US society is so divided based on if you went to a top college or not is just as problematic. Not that the recent rhetoric isn't a problem...
- zzleeper 9y ago
  This is also an issue at Stanford, UPenn and so on. But as you probably know, those schools will never in a million years go candid with a reporter about it (due to prestige and other issues).
  - jimmywanger 9y ago
    > This is also an issue at Stanford, UPenn and so on. Stanford has an endowment of 22.2 billion. UPenn has one of 12.2 billion. The University of Missouri school system has an endowment of 1.2 billion spread over 4 campuses. I doubt that Stanford and UPenn would feel the pinch over the next century. Even the income off the interest of the endowment would probably suffice for campus upkeep and professors' salaries. Missouri's timeframe is drastically shorter, as they have four times the physical facilities to take care of and ~4 times the professor salaries. Also, who would be easier to find grants from either the public or private sectors? Stanford professors with industry contacts, Ivy League professors with that cachet, or somebody from a regional public school?
mc32 9y ago
As other have pointed out, this is mostly about the schools losing full-tuition international students, ie.e "International students pay double the $6,445 tuition of Missouri residents" --which is insane. I mean, it's insane for in-state students to have to shell out 6.5 thousand a year for higher ed... The international students are typically those kids of parents who are perhaps middle to upper middle class in a foreign country (JP, KR, TW, IN, CN, UK, AU, etc) who want to send their kids to an American school and get an "American" degree and go back home for a job --those who come from non-English speaking countries get the bonus/cachet of now having a degree from an English speaking country which potentially gets them an international station or at least a slightly better slot.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > The international students are typically those kids of parents who are perhaps middle to upper middle class in a foreign country (JP, KR, TW, IN, CN, UK, AU, etc) who want to send their kids to an American school and get an "American" degree and go back home for a job Source? Most of the international students I went to school with are still here, working.
  - mc32 9y ago
    I don't have stats but given that in order to stay after an F-1 you need to have job lined up and getting a job as an F-1 is not easy and in addition seeing the vast majority of F-1 students I was acquainted with in UNI went back home after graduation, I would have to suggest the great majority do go back home, generally speaking.
    - greglindahl 9y ago
      There's a selection effect, but I think that everyone who's worked in Silicon Valley knows plenty of people who stayed on F-1 visas. So there's an anecdote that's the reverse of yours.
      - mc32 9y ago
azangru 9y ago
Wikipedia says: "Brin immigrated to the United States with his family from the Soviet Union at the age of 6." A student?
- imron 9y ago
  Elementary student ;-)
sjg007 9y ago
Sergey was 6 years old when his family and him moved to the USA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Brin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Brin

maoistinquisitr 9y ago

Probably the opposite. American students with options are deliberately avoiding the fields the foreign students crowd because of the wage and working conditions suppression the added competition produces. Deliberately discouraging the huge numbers of foreign students will help better cultivate greater American talent. A talent pool of 320 million people is plenty. We don't need to scour the globe.

curiousgal 9y ago
I am yet to meet a single American who didn’t have access to college because of an international student. High tuition and fees are always the number one culprit.
- ransom1538 9y ago
  "There are 3,003 international students enrolled in degree programs at MIT—430 undergraduates (10%) and 2,876 graduate students (43%)—for the current academic year." Really? First school I googled is 3k students. "High tuition and fees are always the number one culprit." No. US students attend IF they get in. This is why we are in a student loan crisis. There is no lack of money backed by US guaranteed college loans.
  - jdamon96 9y ago
    "No. US students attend IF they get in. This is why we are in a student loan crisis. There is no lack of money backed by USA guaranteed loans." Can you help me understand this logic? I don't understand the connection being made from admissions statistics to the student loans crisis.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - lsc 9y ago
      the idea being that if you are accepted, you can get a loan to go to school. A loan that you can't discharge in bankruptcy. A loan that can cause problems later on, if you can't get a job in a high paying field. Or, at least, I think that's what the post you are replying to was getting at. Another view is that the "student loan crisis" is a much bigger deal for people who take out loans for colleges that are easier to get into, colleges that have lower graduation rates and that don't have the same pipeline into higher paying jobs. Most of the elite schools have 90+% graduation rates, and if you graduate from one, you have a pretty decent crack at making good money (and thus paying off your loan without too much trouble.) The idea here being that the elite schools are what colleges promise to be (a path up the socioeconomic ladder) but they are extremely selective (I could totally pay, for example, but they wouldn't let me in; not without me taking two years off to go to community college first. My high school grades were terrible.) - many of the less prestegious schools don't have such high success rates. Community and state schools have graduation rates that are half what the elite schools have. San Jose State, a really pretty good 'state school' has a graduation rate around 50% (Of course, San Jose State is also pretty cheap) University of the pacific, a mid range (expensive) private school in Stockton has a 60% graduation rate. I personally feel that rating schools based on their graduation rates is super problematic; I mean, an elite school isn't going to 'take a chance' on a student who might not tough it out just because they take a reputational hit if the kid swings and misses. But it does make sense from a student loan perspective; if someone is accepted to Stanford, chances are they will graduate, and chances are, the student loans incurred won't be a huge burden, due to the opportunities available. - But a lot of this is simply that you aren't accepted to Stanford unless you are the sort of person who has a lot of opportunity. Maintaining these high graduation rates means that students who are less likely to succeed are not given a chance to try; Because a high graduation rate is part of what makes an elite school, and because high graduation rates generally mean an input filter that filters for people who would have succeeded anyhow, elite schools are not good ways for people who don't have opportunity to gain opportunity.
- jjoonathan 9y ago
  I suspect he means graduate school. I'm white and have a native accent, but in my 2 short years of grad school I had four (!) instances of someone responding with shock at learning that I was a US citizen. One postsdoc even asked flat out what the hell I was doing in grad school if I wasn't working towards a green card.
  - Simulacra 9y ago
    My engineering advisor stressed that, despite the fact I'm a woman, it's critical the university does all that it can to keep me in the program because it was so bloated with international students.
  - NotSammyHagar 9y ago
    what field are you working in? my cs grad student experience was not like that.
- chroem- 9y ago
  Come to Washington State. The University of Washington's preference to international students over in-state has become so lopsided that the state legislature has been threatening to cut off funding and force the school to change its name. Most of my in-state friends were denied admission into their majors during undergrad.
  - kalleboo 9y ago
    I don't know how things work in Washington, but the last article I read on California state schools (where you hear similar complaints) was that the international students were actually funding more in-state students with their higher tuitions, since the state itself wasn't funding the schools enough. So, lots of international students yes, but that also meant the school could afford to host more in-state students than if you got rid of the international students.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    The legislature would actually fund UW at an adequate level, it might be a valid threat. Also, if you want to get into UW, try being from Eastern Washington. There is a quota.
pimmen 9y ago
Do you have any source for your claim at all?
aiiane 9y ago
The computer science field would seem an empirical counter-example to your statement.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
nopinsight 9y ago
You may wish to look at recent performance of different countries in academic competitions like International Math Olympiad and International Physics Olympiad for some objective metrics: https://imo-official.org/year_country_r.aspx?year=2017 https://imo-official.org/year_country_r.aspx?year=2017 http://www.ipho2017.id/home#official-results-of-ipho-2017 http://www.ipho2017.id/home#official-results-of-ipho-2017 The US ranks decently but behind China, Russia, and Vietnam, in both subjects.
- nopinsight 9y ago
  Also take a note of the last names of these US representatives (comprehensive lists for both subjects): IMO 2017: Lin, Gu, Bhattacharya, Chroman, Peng, Huang IPhO 2017: Song, Raman, Balaji, Qin, Shi I would guess that, for many if not most of them, their ancestors just immigrated to the US 1-2 generations ago.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- nopinsight 9y ago
  Edit for the last sentence of my comment above (which is not factually accurate, although the point stands): The US usually ranks well but often comes behind China, Russia, or less well-known countries like Vietnam. Top talent are born all over the world. With global education becoming more decent esp in developing nations, these talented people can flourish and become competitive with those born in developed countries. 7+ billion surely include many more top talent than 300+ million.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

aaron-lebo 9y ago

Sergey Brin went to Stanford. Musk went to UPenn and Stanford. Picchai went to Wharton and the University of Chicago. Narayan went to UC Berkeley. Only Brin and Musk came as undergrads and only Nadella originated at a so-so school: Wisconsin-Milwaukee (he made his way to an MBA at Chicago, too). By and large the article is not talking about those people. Undergrads are where schools make their money (lots of graduate students are funded anyway). Almost none of these people would have been affected. It's hard to overestimate how useful and desirable the top schools are. When students from Akron are running any of those companies (a school the article talks about), then we can worry about losing out on top talent. I think the way US society is so divided based on if you went to a top college or not is just as problematic. Not that the recent rhetoric isn't a problem...

zzleeper 9y ago
This is also an issue at Stanford, UPenn and so on. But as you probably know, those schools will never in a million years go candid with a reporter about it (due to prestige and other issues).
- jimmywanger 9y ago
  > This is also an issue at Stanford, UPenn and so on. Stanford has an endowment of 22.2 billion. UPenn has one of 12.2 billion. The University of Missouri school system has an endowment of 1.2 billion spread over 4 campuses. I doubt that Stanford and UPenn would feel the pinch over the next century. Even the income off the interest of the endowment would probably suffice for campus upkeep and professors' salaries. Missouri's timeframe is drastically shorter, as they have four times the physical facilities to take care of and ~4 times the professor salaries. Also, who would be easier to find grants from either the public or private sectors? Stanford professors with industry contacts, Ivy League professors with that cachet, or somebody from a regional public school?

mc32 9y ago

As other have pointed out, this is mostly about the schools losing full-tuition international students, ie.e "International students pay double the $6,445 tuition of Missouri residents" --which is insane. I mean, it's insane for in-state students to have to shell out 6.5 thousand a year for higher ed... The international students are typically those kids of parents who are perhaps middle to upper middle class in a foreign country (JP, KR, TW, IN, CN, UK, AU, etc) who want to send their kids to an American school and get an "American" degree and go back home for a job --those who come from non-English speaking countries get the bonus/cachet of now having a degree from an English speaking country which potentially gets them an international station or at least a slightly better slot.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> The international students are typically those kids of parents who are perhaps middle to upper middle class in a foreign country (JP, KR, TW, IN, CN, UK, AU, etc) who want to send their kids to an American school and get an "American" degree and go back home for a job Source? Most of the international students I went to school with are still here, working.
- mc32 9y ago
  I don't have stats but given that in order to stay after an F-1 you need to have job lined up and getting a job as an F-1 is not easy and in addition seeing the vast majority of F-1 students I was acquainted with in UNI went back home after graduation, I would have to suggest the great majority do go back home, generally speaking.
  - greglindahl 9y ago
    There's a selection effect, but I think that everyone who's worked in Silicon Valley knows plenty of people who stayed on F-1 visas. So there's an anecdote that's the reverse of yours.
    - mc32 9y ago

azangru 9y ago

Wikipedia says: "Brin immigrated to the United States with his family from the Soviet Union at the age of 6." A student?

imron 9y ago
Elementary student ;-)

sjg007 9y ago

Sergey was 6 years old when his family and him moved to the USA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Brin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Brin